Delete Shadow Copies Remotely

Question

I currently use DISKSHADOW to remove shadow copies from our Hyper-V servers. To do this I have to log onto the server but psexec doesn't work.

psexec \\hyper-v-server diskshadow
DISKSHADOW> Error reading from console. Win32 error: 0x6
The handle is invalid.

I think vssadmin works doing the above, but I'd like to script this with PowerShell and slectively remove the shadow copies. Neither of these tools provide usable output in PowerShell.

I've done a bit of research but not found any way to query snapshots with PowerShell, either locally or remotely. I imagine doing this will involve use of the Get-WMIObject CMDlet to query the relevant info from WMI, but I can only find the Win32_ShadowCopy.Create() method.

EDIT: To be clear, what I would like are objects I can manipulate using PowerShell.

Solution

You can do this remotely with diskshadow. To accomplish this, write a batch file containing the wanted commands and place it somewhere on the target server, then: psexec \\remotehost diskshadow /s C:\path\to\script.bat. You can also use a network location for the path.

Comments

[john]

Thanks @NathanC. I was aware of this also, but I don't like the idea of having to maintain the batch files on each of our hosts. It just feels a bit "hacky".

[Nathan C]

You can specify a remote path so you only have to have a single batch file.